


mother knows best

by WattStalf



Series: A Not-So-Blue Planet [8]
Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Canon Divergence, F/M, Kink Meme, Sally is not a good mother, but not kinky, part of a series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 17:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6478516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WattStalf/pseuds/WattStalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sally wants to do whatever she can to ensure Laurie has all that she never had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mother knows best

**Author's Note:**

> The final part in the series! If you haven't read the others, you at least need to read Laurie's and Eddie's for this one. But yeah, it's finally over.

The divorce didn't bother Sally much. She hadn't loved the man even when she married him, and staying with him for so long had just been a good cover for Laurie, when she had been too ashamed and afraid to address the subject of her true father. And perhaps she would always be that ashamed and that afraid, but it didn't matter a bit now. The girl was about to turn eight, and she had everyone fooled.

Now, there was no one standing in her way when it came to her plans for the little girl. Maybe she had missed her chance at stardom, but that didn't mean Laurie would. She would pick up where Sally had left off, she would achieve what Sally couldn't, and Sally wouldn't even be jealous, because she would know Laurie wouldn't have been able to get there without her, and what sort of mother got jealous of her own daughter anyway?

Laurie would be the better Silk Spectre, in some regards, but it really wasn't a competition.

~X~

There were days when Laurie complained about her exercise routines or the fact that she had to train so much or that Sally kept her in homeschooling every year, but she was growing up. All teenage girls tried to rebel; Sally certainly remembered how she had been and how she had taken charge of her own life at that age, but it was different for her and she had made the right decision. She was still making the right decision now, and Laurie would thank her for it someday.

So she didn't let her little signs of rebellion deter her, and she kept her daughter training towards the day when she would finally be able to debut, when she would finally be ready to take on the streets of New York and earn fame for herself. That was why, when Laurie was sixteen, Sally was so excited to hear about the Crimebusters. The Minutemen had helped her get more visibility back then, so this was her daughter's perfect chance to get noticed and to be a part of something special.

Laurie insisted that Sally not come into the meeting with her, already trying to act so tough and grown up. It was enough to bring tears to Sally's eyes, not that she would ever let Laurie see them. Instead, she replied that she'd come in when it was time to pick her up because she wanted to talk to Hollis and Nelson.

She wondered what it would be like in there, with so many heroes together. Would it be anything like the old days? Hollis wasn't in costume anymore, but there was a new Nite Owl taking up the cause, and Sally had sent in the new Silk Spectre. Nelson was still calling himself Captain Metropolis, and there was that cutie from the papers, that Ozymandias. There was another one that she couldn't remember, who worked with Nite Owl and who Hollis had said would probably be there. She didn't ask him if he had plans of asking the Comedian, because she was sure that he didn't.

Not that she had any interest in seeing him after all these years. In fact, it was better that Eddie wasn't there, getting too close to Laurie. He had stopped pushing to be a part of her life before she was even born, at Sally's insistence, but how would he act around her in person? She was sixteen, the same age he had been when he got his start, so she was practically an adult to him, and with Larry out of the picture, the two of them had nothing to be afraid of. For all she knew, he would have tried to get close to her and try to spill the beans. It was much better that he wouldn't be there.

And when she sauntered in later that evening, she was glad that she didn't have to worry about what would happen if he tried to talk to her in front of their old friends. She had never revealed the nature of their relationship to anyone but Larry, and she hadn't had much of a choice in that one. But then Eddie was pushed from her mind when she saw Laurie talking with Ozymandias, and she could read the expression on her daughter's face quite clearly.

So Laurie had her eye on the popular, handsome hero. Sally had always tried to keep Laurie's mind off dating, not wanting anything to distract her from her career and knowing well and good what that sort of distraction could lead to. She could only protect Laurie so much, but here, she didn't feel like there was anything to protect her from. He seemed, from what she could tell, to be a decent young man, and he was very famous; being seen on his arm could do wonders for her.

She tried to get some information out of Laurie on the way home, but her daughter was immediately put off by it. “I hardly know him, and you're already planning the wedding, just because you think it'll get me good publicity! You know, I bet he's older than me than he looks, and you're just encouraging me to date him, and that's so-”

“Please, Laurie,” she said with an exasperated sigh, “I thought we talked about you not needing to be so melodramatic. Forgive me for trying to have a little fun talking with my daughter. We never have been able to talk about boys together before.”

“Not my fault,” Laurie replied, and that stung. The kid had no idea what she was talking about, did not understand a damn thing, and it wasn't her place to say something like that. For the rest of the trip home, Sally did not bother trying to talk to her daughter any further.

~X~

Even if Laurie didn't appreciate her, Sally wouldn't stop doing what she could to help her out, and that was why she kept in such close contact with Hollis. He kept her filled in on what Laurie was up to and it was through these discussions that she was able to gauge just how close Laurie and this Ozymandias fellow were. And that was why she decided to ask a favor of her old friend, who she knew could never resist her.

“I need you to help me out,” she said. “But really, you'll be helping Laurie.”

“What do you mean?”

“The fact is, she has a huge crush on him,” she replied. “She won't admit it to me, but it's obvious, and I certainly approve. If anyone would make a cute couple, it'd be them, but I'm afraid she's not so good at dating.”

“She isn't?” he asked, and Sally could have laughed at how innocent the poor man was.

“Of course not, silly! She's been too focused on training to worry about boys before, so I'm sure she's terribly clueless,” she said with a grin, knowing how he melted under her smile. Now, it was time for the purpose of their conversation, and she rested a hand on his arm for good measure. “I was wondering if you and Nelly could help her out a little bit. Maybe...pair them up more often?”

~X~

From that point on that, she left things in their hands. She knew that eventually the young man wouldn't be able to resist her daughter, and then it wouldn't matter if Laurie didn't know how to date or not; things would take off between them without any trouble, because mother always knows best.

When he finally got around to asking Laurie out, Sally was sure she only told her because she had to let her know why she would be out that night, and from that point on, told her only the bare minimum. But there was a second date, and a third one, and the press caught wind of it- a few tips here or there helped speed that along- and the new power couple had taken off. She wondered if Ozymandias (and Laurie did at least tell her that his name was Adrian) had any interest in performing himself. If they could be sold as a duo, Laurie would be able to move from hero to star in no time.

It was best not to try to rush things, however, and with the hero thing working out so well and with Laurie growing more and more distant, she laid off on pushing her for the time being. The time would come when she would appreciate it all, and then they could make some real progress in getting her into show business once and for all.

~X~

But that time never came, and Laurie shut her down any time she tried to bring up her career. “Haven't you forced me into enough?” she'd say. “Can't you give me some time to handle everything you've already put on my plate?”

Time was running out for her and her chance at stardom, but she didn't seem to care and all Sally could do was try to be involved in whatever way she could. Even Hollis did not have any suggestions for how to reach her daughter and would instead reply that it might be a good idea to let Laurie do her own thing. _But Laurie doesn't know_ how _to do her own thing!_ She would think, and she wanted to scream because she was the only one who knew how to handle this and she was watching all of her dreams fall apart all over again.

The years went by faster than she could count, and she was getting so much older now and so was Laurie, and if she wasn't careful, life would end up passing her by before she'd accomplished anything. And then two things happened around the same time that shook Sally up in very different ways.

Adrian's retirement was the one that should have affected her the most, being so close to her and all. He was practically her son-in-law, and he had decided to focus on business for the time being, confessing a secret interest in pursuing a political career. Gone were his days as Ozymandias, and gone was chance to market him and Laurie as a super hero duo, but all was not lost. He was a wealthy businessman, very much in the public eye, and politics would be even better. Sally could recover this.

But when the Vietnam War ended, there was news that should not have affected her nearly as much as it did. It was far away from her, it did not concern her, it was not a part of her life, but when she saw it in the papers, it hit her like a freight train. The Comedian had gotten married.

The article waxed poetic on the Vietnamese woman he had allegedly fallen in love with and rescued from a war torn country, some bitch named Ann, and Sally snorted, unable to imagine Eddie doing any of the things the article claimed he had. They claimed he lived with her as a wife long before he brought her back to America, claimed he had been madly in love with her and all this flowery, romantic bullshit that seemed so far-fetched, even more so when she reached the part about the baby.

So, he had knocked her up during the war, and married her out of guilt or obligation or both, and all of this was bullshit. It had to be, because Sally knew damn well that _she_ was the only one he had ever tried to marry and her daughter was the only one he really wanted to raise, and there was just no way that someone like him could show that much sincerity to anyone else. What they had had been special and he wasn't capable of feeling that way about anyone but her. She knew it.

But she had rejected him anyway, because she had bigger plans and a broken marriage and an exposed affair would risk them, and it wasn't worth it to accept an offer of marriage from him, even if she knew that the fact that he was even offering meant something big. She had thought it was a novelty thing. Eddie wouldn't ever find anyone else, so even if she couldn't have him, he could not replace her.

But along came an article claiming that he had, and she was more angry than she had ever been at him, even more angry than the first day he had come to her, acting as if he had any right to show up at her home unannounced. How dare he replace her? How dare he replace her and then replace her daughter with a new daughter? This Martha, who would be nowhere near as beautiful as Laurie, she was sure, and there was no way Ann could have her beat.

How dare he marry someone else? She had rejected him, but he had accepted her rejection. How dare he move on and not try to fight for her? How dare he try to be happy with anyone else? Why was she only just now starting to regret how things had ended for them?

~X~

Two years after Adrian retired, the Keene Act was passed and Laurie had to quit, and she was nowhere near a modeling job or a movie deal or anything like that, and she never had been. Sally had accomplished absolutely nothing for her, and now she didn't know what her daughter was going to do with her life. The only thing she had ever known had been taken from her, and she was a bit too old to start over now.

But then Laurie came to her and said that Adrian had proposed, and that gave Sally something to do. “This is the best news I've heard in a long time!” she declared. “You just sit back and let me handle things, sweetie. It'll be the best wedding you could ever imagine!”

It was a great distraction, and Adrian was willing to fund everything she wanted to do in order to make the wedding perfect, but the more time she spent planning their wedding, the more time she spent seeing them together, and the more she wondered about their relationship. They had been together for so long, but they were getting married now and didn't seem the least bit excited. Both of them carried on as if nothing were changing, as if the wedding didn't mean anything to them.

Even at the rehearsal dinner, there was nothing, and as she and Laurie drove home, she had to say something. “Is there anyone else?”

She was relieved by how shocked and appalled Laurie seemed by the question. “Wha-? Mother, of course there isn't! I don't see when I would have had time to meet anyone else!”

“I just wanted to ask. You know you can tell me these things.” But even as she was saying it, Sally sighed, because she knew that Laurie had never confided anything in her and wouldn't start now. “I just...do you love him?”

The silence that followed gave Sally the only answer she needed, but Laurie still bothered to lie to her. “I do,” she said at last.

“You need to make sure you really do. I mean really, really love him, and not anyone else,” she said, not sure why she was saying this. It wasn't for Laurie, not really. “If you're not marrying for love, there's no point in marrying, and I don't want you to miss out with being with someone you really do love.”

“Well, it's kinda late to be thinking about that,” said Laurie, and she was right. It was too late, for both of them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i did it


End file.
